BamA Inhibitor

With this project we want to actively contribute to refill the dried up antibiotic development pipeline with promising innovative leads for the development of new effective drugs with resistance-breaking properties. Antibiotics have helped extend human life expectancy like perhaps no other class of compounds. However, this achievement of medicine is in jeopardy as many Gram-negative pathogens have developed resistance to most, and in some cases already to all, antibiotics in clinical use.

BamA is a protein that is readily accessible on the outside of Gram-negative bacteria. First, it was assumed that this could not be attacked. Now it has been possible to specifically inhibit this previously unused target. This leads to the death of the pathogens (bacteriolytic effect). BamA inhibitors thus have a great potential to finally produce a new class of drugs against these bacterial pathogens after many decades. We want to develop such an inhibitor into a new urgently needed antibiotic. In the current feasibility phase, we plan to improve the production of the most promising compounds and to perform all necessary tests to nominate the so-called lead structure. The goal is then to develop this to market launch.